Meet The Most DISASTROUS Football League Ever

[Music] over 40 years ago a man by the name of Gary Davidson announced on October 7th 1973 the creation of the world Football League it was going to be a 12 team format that was set to kick off in July of 1974 honestly this seemed like the perfect time to compete with the NFL in the spring of 1974 players were threatening to go on strikes due to disagreements with NFL owners even if it te small this startup League had a Fighting Chance hi I'm Earl Herman and welcome to the new gameing town the world Football League last night at approximately 8:08 p.m. this football was kicked off in Orlando Florida launching the start of the wfl this league claimed it was going to take American football onto a worldwide stage with their championship game being called the the world bow yet the furthest the wfl ever reached was placing a team in Hawaii get this they were called the Hawaiians I just thought some of these team names were odd the Birmingham Americans the Detroit Wheels the Philadelphia Bell and a variety of others oh look the Houston Texans yeah the modern NFL expansion team would later adopt the name there's actually a few others that have stuck in other sports the Charlotte Hornets the Memphis Grizzlies and the Chicago Fire there was quite a bit of different between the world football league and the NFL here are some of the differences overtime was divided into two halves of 7 and 1/2 minutes each starting with a kickoff by one of the teams which I personally think this is a better system than what the NFL has today on the field the wfl went with yellow footballs and flashy uniforms the league also wanted to experiment with color-coded pants based on player positions this never really took off but that would have been something at the end of the season they presented the MVP with a cash prize of $10,000 they actually placed it on center field in $1 bills but my favorite thing has to be what they use to measure first downs instead of sticks and chains they used a device called a Dicker Rod apparently designed for convenience the device was 2 and2 yards long it only needed one person to run it instead of a full chain crew imagine a ball carrier gets tackled close to the first down and the announcers got to be like it looks to be real close here comes out the Dicker Rod because finding three people to run a chain crew isn't all that difficult sadly the Dicker Rod never caught on to build up the teams in the beginning the league held a college draft the first six rounds were held on January 22nd 1974 with the remaining 30 rounds 2 weeks later for a startup League the wfl actually had excellent Talent a lot of dudes spent time in the NFL whether it was before or after this league just to name a few Alfred Jenkins became an allp pro receiver for the Falcons Jack dolin started in a Super Bowl for the Broncos in my last video I mentioned Hall of Famer and reigning Super Bowl MVP Larry zanka and a few of his teammates played in the wfl zanka said he was getting paid 50k a year to play for the Dolphins and when the wfl offered him 3.5 million over two years he couldn't say no another Hall of Famer who joined the league was Ken Stabler and you ever heard of Vince Pali from the movie Invincible he actually got a star in the wfl and made the first catch in league history to kick off the inaugural season the wfl showed major promise early attendance numbers were actually very impressive celebrities were even showing up to games names like Bert Reynolds and Elvis Presley the Philadelphia Bell pulled in 55,000 for their home opener and over 64,000 for their second home game but this turned out to be pseudo success the league found out later the team had been lying about how many tickets they had sold it turned out the team had only sold 13,000 in their first game and just over 5,000 in the second they had just let thousands of people pour into the game for free this ended up turning away investors and sponsors and completely ruining the League's credibility this was probably the turning point of this league there was a game later for the Bell That season where they only had 750 fans show up here's the truth about teams in the wfl several of the 12 teams paid way less than the original franchise fee required this resulted in teams being completely underfunded and not being able to meet the most basic necessities here are some sad and harsh realities of some of these teams only three teams could even pay their players every week the Florida Blazers lived off of McDonald's Mill vouchers after not being paid for 3 months the Portland storm were reportedly being fed by sympathetic fans when the Hornets couldn't pay their laundry bill they had their jerseys impounded so they couldn't play the Detroit Wheels didn't have enough money to buy athletic tape they they ran out in the middle of a game and luckily for them there was a guy who donated enough for them to finish the game there were multiple teams who relocated mid season one of them being Jacksonville which was the team that was supposed to host the World Bowl due to this they had to try and relocate the championship game and the start of the playoffs didn't go much better the Hornets the second place team in the East only sold 1,000 tickets for their first game and due to not reaching Financial requirements dropped out of the postseason entirely in what's supposed to be the climax of the season was truly mediocre at best the world Bowl between the Americans and the Blazers both teams hadn't been paid in weeks the Americans almost didn't show up to the game until they were promised Rings if they won the stadium wasn't even half full it was just not the most hyped up of games the Americans ended up winning and while they were celebrating on the field with a trophy the sheriff's department was going through their locker room confiscating everything they could find and literally right after their celebration they had their uniforms re possessed to help pay off team [Music] debts somehow the league came back the next season and didn't show any Improvement even though they had more NFL Talent they had less teams and the league was just less relevant and the wfl folded before the end of the season years later with old stadiums left in ruins in a last desperate attempt for a merger the Memphis owner filed a lawsuit against the NFL arguing they had violated antitrust laws and should be allowed to be in the NFL they didn't win the case ironically with a league that wanted to be known for more than football in America and expand worldwide their only Champion ever would be a team with the nickname Americans like the last five games we didn't get paid for um we continued to play with reservations uh bad for some of the other kids that were a lot of guys played for free you know it's a tough game to play for free [Music] w

Channel: KTO

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Keywords: KTO, Sport, football, meet the most, disastrous, football league ever, World Football League, NFL, Hypothetical scenarios, player breakdowns, documentary, football stories, American Football, houston texans, meet the series, larry csonka, Soundtrack Derelict Ship, KiilstofteRoyalty Free Music, sports, soccer, interesting ideas, Epidemic Sound, things football, funny, Manchester United, interview, arsenal, Independent, underground, world, YouTube Editor, tv, vice, strangest, usfl, xfl

Id: 0kO8UuUC2Zk

Length: 7min 27sec (447 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2017